


Magic, Not Drugs

by annaloverofarendale



Category: Arrested Development
Genre: Bipolar Disorder, M/M, bipolar George Oscar Bluth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-03-24
Packaged: 2018-03-19 11:18:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3608160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annaloverofarendale/pseuds/annaloverofarendale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gob's family thinks it's drugs. Gob calls it magic. Tony sees the truth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magic, Not Drugs

Gob is seventeen the first time it happens.

Michael is fourteen, and accuses him of being on drugs. Lindsay accuses him of not sharing.

Buster is off somewhere, at Milton or home or wherever Buster goes, he’s so goddamn good at being invisible it doesn’t matter any more.

Gob struggles to slow his words enough so that Michael, slow talking slow moving just slow Michael, can understand. “I’m not on drugs, Mikey, it’s magic.” Michael rolls his eyes, and Gob decides he has to show them. “Watch.”

He whips out a deck of cards, taps it rapidfire with his magic wand, grinning wildly. They’ll have to see now, they’ll have to see him now. But the deck tilts and spills and his hand shakes and somehow the cards are in the air, falling in slow motion to the floor, and Gob is entranced and furious all at once. 

Michael manages to look disappointed and righteous at the same time. “Well, Gob, I sure am glad it’s not drugs.” Gob pumps his fist in the air, vindicated. “-Except that it is drugs. It’s clearly drugs Gob, where did you get- you know what, forget it. Ruin your life for all I care.” Michael storms away, five inches shorter than Gob but already so much older, which isn’t fair, Gob is the first born son, he should know what to do and Michael should need him, but Michael is a freshman, a freaking freshman and already hasn’t needed Gob for five years.

Lindsay’s nose is in the air, and damn it she will turn into Mother if she’s not careful, he has to warn her, but his thoughts are racing too much to hear what disdainful remark she tosses out before she turns and then it’s too late, time is too slow and too fast all at once. 

When Gob finally arrives home, he can’t remember what he did except that there was a car and a hat and there’s a silk scarf tied around his wrist, and maybe glitter on his stomach and Gob has a funny feeling that he did something he wasn’t supposed to and liked it too much and maybe it’s good he can’t remember. Mother accuses him of being high. Michael is standing in the back, an unasked for third parent. 

Gob tries to tell them, he tries to tell them a half dozen times before he gives up. It’s a mantra of sorts for a while. “It’s not drugs, it’s magic.” No one else believes him. Gob decides that means they just don’t have it, they don’t have the magic and never will. He loves his magic, he loves the power pumping through his heart, creating this shield of immunity against mistakes and it stops mattering that people don’t hear or see him, because that’s all a part of the illusion, isn’t it? It has to be. It comes with being magic.

Gob is a month away from graduating when the magic runs out. Now he feels like a junky, how is that possible, he only ever smoked a little weed, he lied about the rest to make Michael mad and Lindsay jealous, and since he found out he was magic he hadn’t done it at all. But the magic is gone, he knows it, because the illusions stop working and his immunity is gone and his heart is struggling and beating so laboriously he doesn’t get up for his history final exam. Father takes care of it, of course, it comes with the family name, but what does that matter? The magic left him, he didn’t deserve to keep it. 

He walks across the stage and forgets to smile. 

When fall comes around again, he makes the leaves change colors and he suddenly has magic again. He flies. He starts spending time on rooftops, looking off into the sky that has colors shifting and churning just like him. He carries around a deck of cards again, and orders a dozen doves online. Only ten make the journey, but that’s fine. He wears glitter and uses smoke and smiles again, this time the trick is that people see the man, or at least they see a man, but it’s not Gob. Or is it? He pops out of strange places and sets half the furniture on fire. But fire is gorgeous anyway. 

This time when the magic fades, he broods with his deck of cards, mechanically practicing and perfecting his techniques until it comes back. 

Over the years, Gob calls the magic his fickle mistress. She comes and goes and now there are real drugs, but only when she’s gone. When she’s here he doesn’t need them. When she’s here, the women find him irresistible and sometimes a sparkly man will come along, and Gob suspects for a moment that they have magic too, but they never do. 

Until Gob is forty five and he finds someone who says “same” to everything he is.

And maybe it’s fear, or maybe it’s the roofie circle, but he doesn’t ask about the magic until they are three months into whatever this is. And Tony listens, but he doesn’t say “same”, and Gob is sputtering and Tony’s hand is in his hair and he’s whispering calming things and Gob swears he’s not on drugs, he isn’t, it’s magic, not drugs, magic not drugs, magic-. And Tony nods along. 

Tony teaches him to switch a letter.

It takes Gob a while, and it sounds like a made up word, manic. He prefers magic, and he tells Tony that, and Tony agrees but says that when they are talking to the doctor, they should use it just in case the doctor asks to see how the tricks are done, and that makes perfect sense to Gob, and “honestly Tony, why didn’t you say that in the first place?”. 

And it’s six months, seven months later when Gob sees Michael and Michael congratulates him on being sober, and Gob shakes the pill bottle and says that Michael has always been confused about drugs and Gob, and he’s still wrong now. Michael looks shocked, which is rare enough that Gob enjoys it, but then he looks the kind of thoughtful that means Michael is about to say something Gob would rather forget, but Gob doesn’t use the forget-me-nows anymore, so Gob hops into the harbor with a flip of his cape and a laugh, but it’s not to escape anymore, or to be seen or to be invisible.

The illusions are just for fun now. 

The big one is over.


End file.
